Stone Bait Doesn't Catch Fish

A client has spent a month camped out in my inbox because nobody will do her urgent work. She’s ranted, whined, and nagged. What she hasn’t done is offer reasonable pay and interesting work. She’s fishing in an over-populated river with nothing but pebbles as bait. The angler a meter down from her is serving Michelin-worthy worms, so *obviously* we’re dining off the end of his line, not hers.

Like your average Fetlife dudebro, she still insists she can solve the problem by asking for something in exchange for nothing, even after weeks of failure. Both have two options:

* Learn how to orchestrate mutually beneficial introductions.

* Burn out faster than their cheap new laptops.

Sure, sending out hundreds of one-word messages is hard work for a time-strapped dudebro, but if you don’t have decent bait, you’re going to get as far as my client has. I know you’ve spent a great deal of time tracking down all those svelte blondes without landing a single date, but we aren’t just fake profiles made by John Baku to attract users like you.

The real women of Fetlife are doing a lot of dating. I’ve met enough men through this site to start my own stable, and I’m a woman. I swear. Your failure isn’t the result of a broken site. It’s the result of playing a high-numbers-low-effort game on a network that's not a dating site. If you don’t bring anything to the table, you’re not going to attract any damned thing. Collectively, the one-word texts of spammers eat my time and show that you’re unwilling to do the emotional labour required to send a genuine message.

I don’t require a Pulitzer-worthy introduction. Hell, I don’t even need all the right spelling. I’m easy that way: Be authentic, and if I can find the time, I will get back to you. Symbiosis doesn’t have to start with an hour’s investment. It’s happy to get moving on just a few minutes of genuine thoughtfulness.